42 Fish Stories 



was on the south side of the pass, near the foot of the great 

 unnamed waterfall over which unheeded flows another and 

 a greater Nameless River. 



We have passed the waterfall and the river and are now 

 well down on the Yukon side. The little ice-cold Summit 

 Lake, where more than one loaded team and its teamsters 

 went through the breaking ice, is said to be well stocked 

 with trout. Men described them to us as Dolly Varden 

 trout. As the lake flows into the Yukon, and as the Dolly 

 Varden is not found in the Yukon, which has only the 

 Great Lake trout, or Mackinaw trout, we developed a geo- 

 logical theory that the Yukon had stolen this lake from the 

 Skagway. The theory looked not unreasonable. Rivers do 

 such things. At the head of the lake was a little dam of 

 glacial drift. Cut through this dam, and the head of the 

 Yukon would flow down into the Skagway. Perhaps it did 

 so in the days before this dam was made. But facts are 

 facts. Let us see what kind of trout lives in the lake, and 

 we will tell you its glacial history. My companion, Pro- 

 fessor Harold Heath, borrowed a fly, and cast into the lake. 

 We had one rise and landed the fish. It was the Great Lake 

 trout, and not the Dolly Varden; so we laid our theory 

 on the shelf, and allowed the Summit Lake to remain 

 in the past, as it is in the present, a head spring of the 

 Yukon. 



I said that rivers do such things. At the head of Roanoke 

 River, near Allegheny Springs in Virginia, is a valley 

 which the Roanoke has stolen — fishes and all — from the 

 Holston River, on the other side of the ridge. To steal a 

 valley is to undermine it gradually from the other side, 

 until the water in the first valley turns and flows the other 

 way. But the Yukon has stolen nothing from the Skag- 

 way, and on second thought, it deserves no credit for its 

 reticence. 



It looks cold to the north of the White Pass, even in 

 midsummer. 



